Anger in the Shutdown

I'm getting more and more angry at the piecemeal, partial funding bills that the government is passing amidst the shutdown. This is not governing. This is not budgeting.

It's not governing to fund only the parts of the government you need, or to rewrite the rule sin the middle of the game. The GOP is going the wrong direction - entirely - and the Demcrats aren't making that case. They need to make that case. They need to win this - and they are letting Republican congressmen vote to close down the government and then berate the park rangers that show up to enforce closed monuments, without promise of a paycheck.

This is wrong; flatly wrong, and I'm disappointed both in Washington for not making this case more clearly, and my fellow Americans for letting the hostage-taking GOP off the hook. We're failing ourselves, and no one seems to even realize it.

The Idiocy of the Shutdown, in 3 Acts: Map, Thought Experiment, Speech - James Fallows - The Atlantic

 I would write a post about this but James Fallows said it better:

The Idiocy of the Shutdown, in 3 Acts: Map, Thought Experiment, Speech - James Fallows - The Atlantic:

Thought experiment. Let's suppose it's the fall of 2005. Suppose George W. Bush has been reelected, as he was in real life. Let's suppose, also as in reality, the Senate remained in Republican hands. But then suppose that Nancy Pelosi and her Democrats had already won control of the House, rather than doing so two years later. So suppose that the lineup as of 2005 had been:

• Reelected Republican president;
• The president's Republican party retaining control of the Senate; and
• Democrats controlling only one chamber, the House.

Then suppose further that Pelosi's newly empowered House Democrats announced that unless George W. Bush agreed to reverse the sweeping tax cuts that had been the signature legislative achievement of his first term, they would refuse to pass a budget so that the federal government could operate, and would threaten a default on U.S. sovereign debt. Alternatively, that unless Bush immediately withdrew from Iraq, federal government funding would cease and the debt ceiling would be frozen.
In this imagined world, I contend:

• "respectable" opinion would be all over Pelosi and the Democrats for their "shrill," "extreme" demands, especially given their lack of broad electoral mandate;
• hand-wringing editorials would point out that if you want to change policy, there's an established route to do so, which involves passing new bills and getting them signed into law, rather than issuing "otherwise we blow up the government" ultimatums;
• no one would be saying that the "grownups in the room" had to resolve the crisis by giving away, say, half of the president's tax cuts. (Even though, to my taste, that would have been a positive step.)

The circumstances are the mirror image now. A party that within the past year has:

• lost the presidency by 5 million votes;
• lost the Senate by a total of 10 million votes;
• held onto control of the House through favorable districting, while losing the overall House vote by 1.7 million nationwide

... is nonetheless dictating terms to the rest of the government. This would have been called extreme and unreasonable under an imagined Nancy Pelosi House in 2005. It is extreme and unreasonable now.

The Story of the Shutdown

First, some obvious points: this is an unprecedented situation, in that the government shutdown has been forced because the party forcing has lost a constitutional challenge and cannot repeal the law
Now, there's a reason that Congress gets the power of the purse - the ability to starve programs by cutting off funding seems like its within Congress's purview. The problem in this case is that Congress isn't doing that - it's just straight refusing to function. It's not clear if furloughed workers will get their salaries back either.

However, this is much better than the debt ceiling limit being broken. The thought here is that the Tea Party interests can be managed - and that the GOP can wave the white flag at some point allowing government funding and the debt ceiling increase to go through.

What I don't think anyone has fully understood is how radicalized these politicians might be.

This sounds something like my politics

A Moderation Manifesto |: The moderate code that I propose consists of four principles: First, in every situation (be it local or global), search for, or build, a complex moral and institutional center. Second, oppose human destructiveness, its power and effects (including war, ecological destruction, or putting a gun to someone’s head to obtain something). Third, recognize human cognitive and moral limits, but without assuming the worst; we are not all depraved idiots. And fourth, recognize the value of continuity, and of loyalty to our inheritance, which allow us to take part in some of the grandest of human projects, handed down from generation to generation.

Moderates can — it seems to me — divide the world into the forces of good and the agents of evil; they just need to do this in a properly moderate way. If we think of human destructiveness as the enemy, and if we see the frontlines of this battle within each person and each group, then the idea that we ought to engage in a battle of creation against destruction can be very much a moderate idea. In this battle we can turn to violence only as an absolutely last resort. Again, this is not a battle of us versus them — the frontline is within each one of us.

The four principles allow deeply transformative forms of moderation. They allow, first of all, a quest for truth, including truth in politics. The third principle, with its recognition of limited human cognitive and moral capacities, disallows a quest for certainty, or any conclusion that one has reached the truth. But a quest for truth in a fallibilist and experimental spirit, the kind of politics exemplified by Gandhi’s satyagraha, is very much allowed as a form of moderation.

1:58 is legendary, what an assembly

Music for Sunday

Focus on the music. The music is good.

A few more thoughts about Syria

• The criticism from Obama by some major foreign policy voices is either a sign that the administration has lost credibility with that establishment group or  part of some sort of meta-play by the Obama Admin.
• It's important to remember that many of Obama's staffers have deep connections from the Clinton era as a part of "official Washington" - and that this process is being driven partly by those social connections as much as the facts on the ground.
• The opposition from movement conservatives is predictable and knee-jerk. Nothing in their arguments convinces me that this is anything more than opportunism.
• Likewise, Putin's motivations are to maintain a friendly regime and the access to the Mediterranean, full stop. His interest in civilians is politically beneficial; therefore its the position he takes.
• Kerry is well connected globally thanks to his time in the senate foreign relations committee. His bellicose actions are deliberate, though the lack of coordination is genuine.
• Obama's end game is continued American credibility and a continued taboo against chemical weapons. Putin's endgame is Russian power. Given the priorities, Russia may well come out visibly on top, looking good.
• That's a worthwhile tradeoff.

A Follow-Up on Syria

At this point, you really shouldn't trust anything that anyone says about the Syria process. The conversations happening behind closed doors are markedly different than the public rhetoric, and I suspect that some of the heat the Obama Administration is getting is desired. The true history of this time will come out with Obama's papers - in the meantime, we can only guess.

On Syria

There is no clear option on Syria - we don't know if one or any option will work. I do believe the international taboo against chemical weapons is worth some spending to maintain it, but also that war is a Pandora's box. Let's hope the Russia play works.

Said Andrew Sullivan:

The money quote for me, apart from the deeply moving passage about poison gas use at the end, was his description of a letter from a service-member who told him, “We should not be the world’s policeman.” President Obama said, quite simply: “I agree.” And those on the far right who are accusing him of ceding the Middle East to Russia are half-right and yet completely wrong. What this remarkable breakthrough has brought about is a possible end to the dynamic in which America is both blamed for all the evils in the world and then also blamed for not stopping all of them. We desperately need to rebuild international cooperation to relieve us of that impossible burden in a cycle that can only hurt us and the West again and again.

I can't even imagine the workfload, but a reminder that even the most creative have tropes.

On Names

When someone speaks your name, it has the power to turn you toward them – to turn your head, or your attention, or your steps, or sometimes your life.  Just the sound itself has that power – even before you consider what the sound means, before you start to remember all the stories and take account of all the synapses of relationship that are submerged in the meaning of such a simple thing as a single name.

The discovery of the true meanings of our names takes most of us a lifetime.  By the time most of us are adults, it’s as though a name has walked through the deep woods in all the ripest seasons, picking up meanings and memories that cling to it like burrs and milkweed fluff and the smells of life.  And when you speak such a pungent name as that, it not only turns the head of the person who bears it; it conjures something of the truth of the person you name.

  - A very reverend man that serves at my college

Privacy

I have an unpleasant suspicion that some of the CAPCHA's I've been seeing on the web are used to help with address recognition in photos. That feels a little creepy, but then again automatic programs probably don't need much help.